Myanmar (Burma)

I've spent the last two or so days recovering from Burma but it really was fantastic. My goal was to go to Bagan, a city of 1000 temples, but I would have had about two days to make the trip and at least 20 hours would have been spent on a bus so we ended up staying a little closer to Yangon.

The first night we were there we went to Swedegon Pagoda, this ginormous golden pagoda in the center of the city. It was really cool to see in the moonlight, it is just so massive and impressive. We ended up wondering around in China town around 10 or 11pm finding a mildly cheap hotel and four of us crashed for the night. Not a lot of night life in Burma, it is not a drinking/partying culture so everyone is pretty much in their homes by 10pm. The second day we went to a market early and purchased "Longis" the standard dress for men and women. They are long skirts basically. Men's look like a big tube that you not at the waist to keep up, women's are a tie style so they wrap around. In general it is very rare to see any women with bare shoulders or their knees, so we tried to dress pretty conservatively.

My friends, Laura and Keagan, and I seperated from our big group in attempts to find a train or bus station, ended up meeting a travel agent who knew about the ship and what we were doing and set us up with a private car to a temple town about 2 hours away for the day, and bus tickets to and from a beach town as well as the hotel. So that day we went to a small village called Bago, and visited about 4 temples and pagodas and saw much of the landscape. Our cabbie was awesome, unfortunately I cannot say his name but I did get a picture! His car was probably a 1989 toyota, no AC, and keep in mind we are on the equator and its about 102 degrees Fahrenheit so the cars and buses overheat often so it is common to stop once or twice on a longer drive to poor water in the radiator coolant or on a bus they spray down the radiator I think (I might be wrong on exactly what they were hosing down on the buses, but you get the point). So on our way to Bago our driver pulled over next to a pond and said "water" pointing, this being our first experience cooling the cars you can imagine our confusion. We ended up helping fill water bottles in this pond next to the road... feel like I definitely got worms at some point in Burma...

Another reason to love our cabbie, he knew I was really excited every time we saw cows and steers hauling carts so on our way out of town he pulled over by a cart being pulled by some steers and had us get out and I got to pet some cows!! I was on cloud nine! Laura and Keagan were slightly stunned but they had fun with it and pet them too! Can't wait to post those pictures!

We had another early morning for the bus, up at 4am, met our cabbie at 5am outside the Port station. He brought his son with him that morning (I'm guessing he was about 20) probably because he went home and told his family about these white girls he had been driving around, but we actually dropped him back off at their house so we got to see the outside of a pretty middle class home (apartment really). His son asked to take a picture of us before he left which was pretty hilarious.

We were headed to a town called Ngwe Saung, a beach village North of Yangon. The bus ride took about 6 hours, but they have AC for most of it, and a TV at the front (the first bus they showed Skyfall and some Burmese music videos, but on the way back it was only Burmese music videos.... for six hours). We got to Ngwe Saung around 1pm, and the reason we went there was because there is an elephant camp right outside town where you can ride and see elephants. We found out they only come out in the morning so we missed our shot, but no worries we had a bungalow right off the beach so we headed there.

The beach was so breathtakingly beautiful. White sand beaches with almost no one on them except for a few fishing boats and some horseback riders and a few guys riding motorcycles across the sand. Also cannot wait to post pictures. Laura got stung by a jellyfish there at the end of the day but she recovered fairly quickly. We spent the night walking the street (singular) of the village and met some other travelers and talked to some other Semester at Sea students who were there. And then it was back on the bus....

When we made it back to Yangon we were pretty exhausted, but we did a little shopping and then ended heading back to the ship around 5pm.

Unfortunately our trip in Burma was cut a little short because they had to dredge the river in order for us to pull in, along with some issues with the tide that knocked our time of arrival in the port of Yangon back from 8am to about 4pm and we didn't get off the ship until 7pm, so we lost about a day there. Also the port was about an hour bus ride outside of Yangon, so my first day in Yangon started at 8pm. The last day we were scheduled to leave at 8pm meaning we had to be on the ship by 6pm, but the government changed our time of departure to 4pm, so we had to be on the ship by 2pm, and the last shuttle bus from Yangon to the ship left at 11am, so there was little point to go out the last day.

All in all, I absolutely loved Burma. The people were so friendly, and smiley, everyone is shouting hello at you and so happy to see you. I'm going to come back to the states really disappointed when all people stop greeting me so nicely :D The landscape is beautiful. Bright green rice patties, cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, goats, and thatched roof homes.

And what do you know, we'll be in India tomorrow..... how did I get so blessed?!